Turnstyle: The SABR Journal of Baseball Arts: Issue No. 2 (2020)

Turnstyle is the journal of baseball arts and literature published by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and produced by SABR's Baseball Arts research committee. Turnstyle combines poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction with baseball-themed art and illustration. In Issue 2 we have an exploration of the art of Joaquin Newman, an Oakland-based artist who combined the Mexican tradition of calaveras (skeleton paintings for Day of the Dead) with baseball cards for a series of paintings, one of which graces the issue's front cover. Andrea Long writes about how baseball connected her with her father, even after his passing, and George Skornickel looks back on a special Opening Day he shared with his mother when he was young. Several writers referenced the trying circumstances of the 2020 pandemic, including Bill Nowlin's closing essay about the unique wait for 2020 Opening Day. Anika Orrock brings us a lively, and true, story of a nun who played baseball, while three members of the Moonlight Graham Society recount how each of them made their sole appearance in a professional game, a la the society's namesake. In "Ninth Inning" writer Bradley Stribling gives us a fictionalized account of a real game: a 1925 match between a Negro League ball team and a Ku Klux Klan team, while Bryan Erwin sends us deep into the gut-churning moral dilemma of a player whose split-second decision on the field may have far-reaching consequences in "The Spoiler."Thirty-six pieces in all fill the pages of Issue 2, including a baker's dozen poems, a dozen articles and autobiographical essays, seven stories, and over a dozen paintings and illustrations.